After E2, Chicago clubs face perilous times

City inspectors cracking down on violators

May 25, 2003|By Howard Reich, Tribune arts critic.

Late last Saturday night, three fire marshals walked into the Velvet Lounge, on South Indiana Avenue, checked for licenses and fire extinguishers, found everything in order and left, allowing the musicmaking to proceed.

The weekend before, several vice section police officers dropped in on HotHouse, in the South Loop, inspected licenses, determined that they were inadequate and shut down the club.

A few weeks earlier, fire inspectors visited the Green Mill Jazz Club, in Uptown, deemed the place too crowded and ordered management to cut attendance to the 106 mandated by the club's license.

For Chicago club owners and audiences, there's a whole new world of rules and regulations being enforced in the wake of the E2 nightclub disaster of Feb. 17, when 21 people were killed in a stampede to escape the dance club.

But the shuttering of HotHouse, which has applied for new licenses and hopes to receive them and reopen as soon as possible, has sparked debate about the nightclub crackdown now under way.

To advocates, the city's tough enforcement is long overdue and might have prevented the E2 disaster. To critics, the city's new vigilance is an overreaction that generates headlines but has the unfortunate effect of wounding or destroying local businesses.

Both perspectives contain elements of truth.

Changing scene

In the months since the E2 tragedy, virtually every club and concert venue that this listener has visited has been less ominously overcrowded than in the past, while club managers appear to be taking greater care with customers' safety.

Just before last Saturday night's performance by Bill Frisell at the Old Town School of Music, on North Lincoln Avenue, an announcer took pains to point out the locations of exits and the procedures for getting out quickly, should that become necessary. Last month at the Green Mill, on North Broadway Avenue, the crushing crowds that might have been expected for shows by the Matt Wilson Quartet, of New York, were replaced by a noticeably smaller audience, which made the club far easier to negotiate than at any other time in recent memory.

Even HotHouse, which under its current licenses can offer certain "theatrical" presentations and limited liquor sales, seemed transformed for the better last weekend, when it temporarily opened for a one-night show by the Portuguese fado singer Mariza. The standing-room-only throng that typically packs HotHouse was transformed into a smaller, more manageable audience that was formally seated along theater-style aisles. Moreover, audiences did not have to put up with the distraction of waiters taking orders, serving drinks and collecting payment during the musicmaking.

Clearly, the tenor of Chicago night life has changed, at least for the moment.

"It's important that all of the rules be followed, for a lot of reasons," says Bea Reyna-Hickey, director of the city's Department of Revenue, which issues licenses to nightclubs and has found HotHouse in violation.

"If a place like HotHouse wants to operate as a music-and-dance club rather than as a `theatrical' venue, it brings more traffic into the neighborhood, more activity, more liquor sales, which means there needs to be notification to the registered voters within 250 feet of the establishment.

"If more than 51 percent of the registered voters within the area object, that would be taken into consideration" in the licensing process, adds Reyna-Hickey.

So HotHouse will have to go through a rigorous, formal process before it can resume operating as it has since 1998, when it reopened at its current address on East Balbo Drive (after several years on North Milwaukee Avenue).

An overreaction?

Yet HotHouse fans, who voiced their support for club owner Marguerite Horberg during last weekend's Mariza show, consider the shuttering of the club between sets by Orquesta Aragon heavy-handed, at best. Considering that the city did not cite specific safety violations, HotHouse devotees argue that local government may be overreacting to the E2 disaster by flexing muscle where it's unnecessary.

"People like me, who live in the South Loop and love HotHouse, are absolutely outraged and incensed and totally baffled by what the city did," says Victor Margolin, professor of design history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an ardent clubgoer.

"HotHouse is doing good things for the city by bringing music from around the world here. For the city to hit them at their most vulnerable moment -- when they're putting on a performance -- is incomprehensible," adds Margolin, who, like other HotHouse fans, suggests that such licensing issues should have been handled during the business day and without shutting down a popular cultural center.

"It's even more incredible," continues Margolin, "when you think that the city's own Department of Cultural Affairs has collaborated with HotHouse on concerts.

"Why would the city shoot itself in the foot to hurt one of its best allies?"